Band Protocol September 2020 Community Update
Dear Band Community,
September marked the one year anniversary of Band Protocol on Binance Launchpad. Over this time, we have consistently tested and iterated our oracle technology starting with the launch of the first version of Band Protocol on Ethereum Mainnet to our second and much more optimized version on BandChain.
Our team has also collectively decided to NOT release 100% of the foundation and team BAND token unlocks, continuing to lock up the tokens for an additional year to express our long-term commitment and vision for Band Protocol.
The 3.8% unlocked for the ecosystem fund will also go directly into securing the BandChain decentralized oracle network via staking and will only be used in the future for grants, bug bounties, hackathons, and other community initiatives.
The Band Protocol journey, although one year in, has only just scraped the beginning — thank you all to our validators, delegators, community members and stakeholders who are helping to secure the oracle network with over 84.5M $BAND staked and consistently driving adoption of Band oracle technology.
Tech Updates
In September, the Band Protocol team has been working with our supportive group of validators to test the network upgrade from Wenchang to GuanYu. The upgrade was successful with 39 validators participating and more being onboarded.
We have continued to work with our partners to stress-test the BandChain network to simulate the production environment, detecting any potential attack vectors or unforeseen outcomes, as we eagerly await for the results of BCIP-1: GuanYu Upgrade Proposal — the first proposal to upgrade BandChain mainnet and marks an important milestone to further decentralize our protocol.
Technical Milestones
September marked the achievement of three key technical milestones at Band Protocol:
- Successfully tested the upgrade procedure on GuanYu Testnet #3
- Proposed an upgrade proposal from
wenchang-mainnettoguanyu-mainnet - Add features on CosmoScan that shows proposals and allows BAND stakers to vote.
Notable BandChain Update
We released the latest version of bandd for Wenchang network that will be used in the upgrade process that fixed the bug when exporting the current state to the genesis file.
In addition, we have released GuanYu Mainnet Release v1.2.6 that implements the migrate command for the exported Wenchang state to a new genesis for GuanYu version. Both versions have been tested by our internal migration test and public testnet #3.
Developer Client Tool
We started to implement a library for client-side to get information (e.g. requests, oracle script detail), send request transactions to BandChain. The first version has been written in Python with implementations in other languages coming up in the near future.
CosmoScan Redesign
Band Protocol is proud to release a major improvement and redesign of CosmoScan, the official block explorer for BandChain. This includes vast improvements across design, mobile responsiveness, statistics on data requests and much more!
The new and improved CosmoScan is now LIVE at cosmoscan.io, we look forward to hearing your feedback as always on our Discord and Telegram channels.
For developers and users of Band Protocol, tracking on-chain network usage, fee generation, oracle script development and validator statistics will be seamless and completely transparent.
The governance proposal page will also be enabled to bring a stronger decentralized development process within Band Protocol.
CosmoScan Redesign
Band Protocol is proud to release a major improvement and redesign of CosmoScan, the official block explorer for BandChain. This includes vast improvements across design, mobile responsiveness, statistics on data requests and much more!
The new and improved CosmoScan is now LIVE at cosmoscan.io, we look forward to hearing your feedback as always on our Discord and Telegram channels.
For developers and users of Band Protocol, tracking on-chain network usage, fee generation, oracle script development and validator statistics will be seamless and completely transparent.
The governance proposal page will also be enabled to bring a stronger decentralized development process within Band Protocol.
Partnership Developments
During the month of September, our integration team has been working closely with partners to bring testnet oracle scripts to the production environment on the Mainnet. We are excited to showcase the integration progress of developers and applications using Band Protocol on the Mainnet along with Fantom who recently launched fMint!
Fantom Partnership
Congratulations to our partner Fantom on their launch of fMint, a stablecoin protocol for the minting of fUSD which is consuming the FTM/USD provided by Band Protocol on the Opera Mainnet. This is critical in ensuring the fUSD gateway to all Fantom Finance products including lending, swapping 176 synthetic assets is highly secured from the beginning.
Using fMint, users are able to collateralize tokens (FTM initially, with more tokens to be supported) to mint fUSD, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 with the US Dollar. BAND oracles set the price reference for fUSD minting (and debt liquidations in the future) to keep the system well-collateralized and safe.
The FTM/USD price feed is updated based on 1% price deviation or by default every 5 minutes with the data being sourced from multiple unique data sources selected by Fantom developers.
In addition to fMint, Band Protocol’s customizable oracle technology provides Fantom developers access to a variety of price feeds, real-world data points, events, and the ability to create fine-tuned customized oracles.
The goal of this ongoing collaboration is to continuously bring the highest reliability and security to end-users of DeFi products through robust decentralized oracles provided by Band Protocol.
TRON Partnership
TRON Foundation strategically partnered and successfully integrated Band Protocol into TRON on September 1 2020. TRON is one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems, to provide scalable and secure decentralized $BAND oracles for an ecosystem with almost 1000 decentralized applications.
TRON and Band Protocol are solving the blockchain scalability issue and have joined forces to bring customizable and decentralized oracles for all leading DApps on TRON. As a start, $BAND will be integrated with JUST, the leading stablecoin protocol, to secure over $30M in collateral with Band’s price feed.
Loopring Partnership
Loopring, a leading Ethereum decentralized exchange and payments protocol, has chosen and completed integration with Band Protocol to reliably update all supported asset prices on Loopring Exchange.
Loopring users can now more efficiently identify slippage rates and safeguard transactions from price manipulation. This will bring additional reliability and security to the Loopring ecosystem by producing aggregated market data from multiple trusted sources in a timely manner.
The oracle scripts have been migrated to the BandChain Proof-of-Authority Mainnet and live in the production environment.
The integration with Loopring is setting a standard for the treatment of interfaces that users rely on to make informed decisions. BAND is used to prevent the utilization of centralized sources in all aspects of decentralized application.
Chainode Partnership
Chainode, a Switzerland-based professional validation service provided and blockchain consultancy, has partnered with Band Protocol and been onboarded as a validator on both the Wenchang Mainnet and GuanYu Testnet.
The team is committed to working with $BAND to bring secure oracle technology to all blockchain applications.
Velo Protocol Partnership
Velo Protocol, a Stellar-based financial protocol powering the Lightnet cross-border remittance network, has strategically partnered with Band Protocol to integrate decentralized oracles for foreign exchange and token pricing data.
Velo Labs is building a scalable financial protocol leveraging blockchain and smart contract technology to enable borderless value transfer and digital credit issuance.
They are also backed by industry-leading companies across multiple verticals including but not limited to Seven Bank, Hashkey, Hanwha Investment and Securities, and the CP Group — the largest conglomerate in Thailand.
Band Protocol will be providing secure foreign exchange and VELO token price feeds that enable users to receive the appropriate amount of digital credits corresponding to any fiat currency including GBP, JPY, EUR, USD and more.
Enabling one of the Velo Protocol’s core functions using decentralized and real-time oracle data on BandChain allows Velo Labs and Band Protocol to bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds, thereby empowering millions of people in remittance and money transfer markets.
MANTRA DAO Partnership
MANTRA DAO, a Substrate-based community-governed DeFi platform, has strategically partnered with Band Protocol to explore avenues of oracle integration and will run a validator node on the $BAND Mainnet.
BAND token holders will be able to delegate their tokens to MANTRA DAO validator nodes to earn block rewards on BandChain and additional $OM tokens.
MANTRA DAO leverages the wisdom of the crowd to create a community-governed, transparent, and decentralized ecosystem for Web 3.0. They are currently building various DeFi protocols including lending, borrowing, games, and a KARMA reputation system where both teams are exploring the implementation of BAND oracles.
This marks the beginning of our integration into Substrate-based blockchains and DeFi applications in the Polkadot ecosystem
Voyager Listing
Band Protocol ($BAND) has been listed on Voyager, one of the leading commission-free digital asset exchanges licensed in the United States.
Users can connect their bank account and instantly trade BAND with USD alongside 30+ of the most popular digital currencies.
Nominex Listing
Band Protocol (BAND) is available for trading in BAND/BTC or BAND/USDT pairs on Nominex Exchange.
Community Outreach
During September, Band Protocol has been participating in Binance’s Build for Bharat hybrid hackathon and accelerator program. Stay tuned for more updates on our presentation at the Build for Bharat meet up coming soon!
On the other hand, we have
Successful Testnet Upgrade
Band Protocol is proud to say the testnet upgrade from Wenchang to GuanYu was a success! Over 36+ validators participated in the upgrade process and will continue to battle-test the network with the $BAND team before the public Mainnet launch of GuanYu.
We have published a brief update report and steps for validators to join Testnet #3 in the official announcement below. The Band Protocol team will continue to work with validators in battle-testing the network to ensure everything works smoothly without problems from various attack vectors.
We welcome existing and new validators to join the testnet to help us through this final stage which will secure decentralized oracle functionality on BandChain
Official Governance Proposal for Wenchang Mainnet Upgrade
Band Protocol is proud to submit the official proposal to upgrade BandChain from Phase 0 to Phase 1 given the success of the GuanYu Testnet #3 upgrade and stable network performance over the past weeks.
This will allow validators on the $BAND Mainnet to fulfil data requests in return for a portion of the accrued fees.
If the proposal passes, we will proceed to upgrade the network at block 4172935 which is expected to be around October 14, 2020 2:00 pm UTC and GuanYu chain will start 1 hour precisely after the upgrade time. If the proposal fails, we will not upgrade our mainnet and collect feedback to submit a new proposal that fixes all raised concerns.
This marks the beginning of a fully decentralized Band Protocol where every token holders who stake their $BAND tokens will have a direct say in governing all future protocol upgrades.
There will be many more discussions around key parameters of token-economics so join us in our discussion on Discord
Looking Into October
October is looking to be another monumental month for Band Protocol with the expected upgrade from BandChain Phase 0 to Phase 1 expected to take place at approximately October 14, 2020 2:00 PM UTC.
This means that the Band Protocol decentralized oracle network will be fully decentralized and operational with over 67+ validator nodes. Furthermore, BAND stakers will also be able to submit and participate in governance proposals that steer the development of the project.
About Band Protocol
Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts. Blockchains are great at immutable storage and deterministic, verifiable computations — however, they cannot securely access data available outside the blockchain networks. Band Protocol enables smart contract applications such as DeFi, prediction markets, and games to be built on-chain without relying on the single point of failure of a centralized oracle. Band Protocol is backed by a strong network of stakeholders including Sequoia Capital, one of the top venture capital firms in the world, and the leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.
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